Growthcap Insights

In this episode we chat with Aaron Klein, Co-founder and CEO of Riskalyze.  Riskalyze invented the Risk Number, which enables financial advisors to use data to construct portfolios most suitable for their clients risk profile.  Advisors, broker-dealers, RIAs and asset managers use the Riskalyze platform to create alignment between clients and portfolios, leverage sophisticated analytics to increase the quality of their advice, automate trading and client account management, and access world-class models and research. We discuss why today’s financial advisors often lack the necessary tools to adequately serve their clients, the methodology behind the riskalyze platform, and Aaron’s key tenets to scaling his company among many other topics. We hope you enjoy the show.  

In this episode with chat with Rick Wilson, the CEO of Miva, a leading comprehensive ecommerce platform.  With over 25 years of executive-level experience, Rick has a unique vantage point on the business shift to ecommerce, asserting that business society is still very early in the transition to ecommerce, with only about 18% of retail transactions currently conducted online. With comprehensive solutions for all facets of online selling, Miva delivers modern omnichannel ecommerce for every customer and every industry.  It has processed more than 100 billion dollars in orders. We hope you enjoy the show

In this episode we speak with Zack Rosen, the CEO and co-founder of Pantheon. We chat about how Zach’s curiosity and early experiences at the intersection of society and technology eventually led to building the leading WebOps (Website Operations) platform - one that empowers marketing and development teams to take control of their websites, while giving them the agility to win in the dynamic world of digital marketing. Pantheon powers over 300,000 sites and is trusted by thousands of marketing and development teams around the world. The company is backed by $100M of venture investment from Sageview Capital (Avalara, Demandbase), Scale Venture Partners (ExactTarget, Box, DocuSign, Bill.com), Foundry Group (SendGrid, Mapbox), as well as Baseline Ventures, First Round Capital, and Floodgate. We hope you enjoy the show

In this episode we speak with Aircall co-founder and CEO Olivier Pailhes. After a career in strategy consulting with BCG and corporate development with multinational company ArcelorMittal, Olivier embarked on an entrepreneurial journey. He co-founded Aircall, which was built to make phone systems as easy to manage as any other business workflow. He wanted to make it accessible, transparent, and collaborative. The company was founded in 2014, has raised over $100 million and has offices in New York, Paris, Madrid, Berlin and Sydney. At the time of the company’s founding, phone technology was not in vogue with investors, however the requisite tech infrastructure had just been developed to make improving phone systems a reality and Olivier jumped at the opportunity. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode we speak with Mike Morini, a 30-year software veteran experienced in growing and scaling enterprise software companies. Mike is the CEO of WorkForce Software, a cloud-based labor management platform that empowers employees and managers to digitize time and labor processes, optimize demand-driven scheduling, simplify absence management and enable strategic business insight. When approached about joining WorkForce Software, Mike saw an opportunity for the company to scale globally and attack a $20 billion market. More importantly, he saw a path to becoming number one. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode, we chat with Dr. Vipin Garg, the President and CEO of Altimmune, a biotech company pioneering the development of intranasal vaccines and therapeutics, including ones that can prevent the transmission of and treat COVID. He has more than three decades of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries with a successful track record building and leading notable private and publicly traded companies. Dr. Garg was named a Top 25 Biotech CEO of 2021 by The Healthcare Technology Report.  He received his PhD in Biochemistry in 1982 from the University of Adelaide, Australia, and his Master of Science degree from IARI Nuclear Research. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode, we speak with Sunil Thomas, the CEO and cofounder of CleverTap, which is the leading customer engagement and retention platform that helps brands maximize user lifetime value. Consumer brands around the world representing over 8,000 apps—including Vodafone, Star, Sony, Discovery, Fandango LATAM, Carousell, and Gojek—trust CleverTap to help them improve user engagement and retention thereby growing long term revenue. CleverTap is backed by leading venture capital firms including Sequoia India, Tiger Global Management, Accel, and Recruit Holdings, and operates out of San Francisco, Seattle, London, Singapore, and Mumbai. We chat with Sunil about how CleverTap is helping companies optimize the mobile experience for its users as well as his experience building the company. We hope you enjoy the show.

When it comes to growth equity, Jon Korngold, Global Head of Blackstone Growth, is as good as it gets. Perhaps he can be considered one of the few who sets today’s bar in the asset class. His rapid rise began at Goldman Sachs and General Atlantic, but maybe it began even earlier, maybe it began with a piece of advice his father gave him when he was growing up. Blackstone recently announced the final close of Blackstone Growth (BXG), its inaugural growth equity fund. BXG was oversubscribed and closed at its hard cap of $4.5 billion – with third-party capital commitments from a wide range of family offices, entrepreneurs, endowments, strategic institutional investors, pension funds, high-net-worth individuals, and other investors – making it the largest first-time growth equity private fund raised in history. We cover a lot of ground in our conversation from Blackstone Growth’s approach to growth equity to its unique platform capabilities to the importance of ESG. We hope you enjoy the show.

At over $100 million in annual recurring revenue, Amplitude has consistently scaled each year since its founding in 2012. The Company provides a product intelligence platform that enables businesses to optimize digital product innovation. It serves over 30,000 teams at companies like Walmart, Ford, Inbev, Atlassian, Microsoft, Twitter, Hubspot, and Procter & Gamble. Amplitude’s cerebral yet highly attuned founder and CEO, Spenser Skates, is largely to thank for the company’s rapid rise. He is not only a highly skilled entrepreneur, he is a global thinker and proactive leader stepping up in areas for the betterment of society. We cover a wide range of topics spanning Spenser’s source of inspiration, his early beginnings as an entrepreneur and his disciplined approach to consistent scaling. The company is backed by Benchmark, Battery, IVP, Sequoia and GIC. We hope you enjoy the show.

I’ve spoken to hundreds of private equity investors over the years, and after spending time with Nic, you can’t help but come away feeling that he would make for a great capital partner. Nic Humphries is the Senior Partner and Executive Chairman of Hg and Head of the Saturn fund. Hg, the leading european private equity firm focused on software and services, has over $30 billion under management and is supported by an investment team of over 140 people, plus a portfolio team of more than 35 operators. The firm is based in London, Munich and New York. Nic has led or co-led more than 30 investments over the last 27 years. He started his investing career in 1990 and has focused exclusively on technology and software since 1994. He joined Hg in 2001 as founder of the firm’s Technology Team. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode, we chat with Peter Holt, the CEO of The Joint Chiropractic, the largest franchised network of Chiropractic clinics in the world with approximately 600 clinics system wide. The Joint is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ based in Scottsdale, AZ. Previously, Peter was President and Chief Executive Officer for Tasti D-Lite where he transformed the NYC based licensed outlets into a complete business format franchise system.. He has been active in the franchise community for more than 30 years, helping iconic companies such as Mail Boxes Etc. (now The UPS Store), Tasti D Lite and Planet Smoothie manage their franchise systems in both domestic and overseas markets. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode, we chat with Matthew Safaii, the Founder and Managing Partner of Arrowroot Capital Management, a growth equity firm based in Marina Del Ray, California. The firm invests in growing and healthy, recurring revenue, software-as-a-service and internet-based businesses. Recently, Matthew launched Arrowroot Acquisition, a $250 million SPAC which focuses on enterprise software. Matthew was named a Top 25 Software Investor of 2020 by GrowthCap. He began his investing career at Platinum Equity and subsequently TA Associates in the Boston and London offices. He also served as a managing director and head of acquisitions at Actua. Matthew graduated from Boston College and holds an MBA from The Wharton School. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode, we chat with Dr. Ben Maruthappu, the Co-Founder and CEO at Cera, which is a technology-enabled home care provider using digital and data to improve elderly care services. Cera was launched in November 2016 and since then has grown to over $160 million in revenues and is EBITDA positive. The company now has 5,000+ employees, with 50 offices across the country, delivering ~30,000 care visits a day, making it the largest care company in Europe, if not beyond.  It has raised approximately $100 million of financing.  Dr. Ben is highly accomplished in the business and medical fields with degrees from Oxford University, Harvard University and Cambridge University.  He served as a Senior Advisor to Bain, Board Member of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and Operating Partner at Kairos, among other notable positions. We hope you enjoy the show.

Eliot Forster is the Chief Executive Officer of F-star Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing next-generation immunotherapies to transform the lives of patients with cancer.  To date, the company has built a comprehensive IP estate, with over 200 issued patents and more than 60 pending applications, many of which have blockbuster potential. In this conversation, we discuss Eliot’s career as a corporate executive in big pharma as well as his transition to and leadership experience in venture and growth stage biotech.  Before coming to F-star in 2018, he served as chief executive officer of Immunocore and prior to that, he held executive positions at Creabilis Therapeutics, Solace Pharmaceuticals, and Pfizer. We also explore the broader biotech industry in the context of private company investing as well as the specifics of F-star’s drug development programs. We hope you enjoy the show

In this episode, we chat with Rami Karjian, Co-Founder and CEO of Medically Home, an innovative tech-enabled clinical enterprise that is transforming the way hospital care is given globally.   Rami began his career with McKinsey & Company where he worked for over 13 years across multiple offices and rose to Partner.  Subsequently, he was the President of Flextronics, the largest global technology provider of post-manufacturing supply chain logistics and repair services.   Rami then went on to co-found Medically Home in 2016.  To date, the company has raised over $60 million from strategic healthcare partners.  It continues to succeed in bringing the virtual hospital to the homes of high and medium acuity patients with common medical diagnoses. We hope you enjoy the show.    

In this episode, we chat with Andrew Dudum, the founder and CEO of Hims & Hers, which is an online healthcare platform providing products and services to millennials and others. Hims & Hers recently became public through a SPAC transaction. It was acquired by Oaktree Acquisition Corp. in January of 2021, in a deal valuing the company at $1.6 billion. Today, just a few weeks later, the company’s market capitalization is approximately $4.5 billion. What’s incredible about the Hims story is that the company was founded just three years ago and in a very short amount of time it has grown to $140 million in annual revenue, has run more than 2 million telehealth visits and operates at a 70% gross margin. Perhaps what’s even more incredible is the seemingly unlimited runway for the company in the years ahead. We’re still in the early innings when it comes to online healthcare offerings for today’s connected consumer. As for the estimated market size? About $4 trillion. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode, we chat with Peter Arrowsmith, a General Partner of JMI Equity and a Top 25 Software Investor of 2020. JMI is a leading growth equity firm focused on helping founders and management teams in scaling their software companies.  The firm is well equipped to do so given its long and focused track record in software, which goes all the way back to its founding and lead backer John Moores, the founder and former Chairman and CEO of BMC Software.   Notably, JMI has raised over $4 billion since it was founded in 1992.  Over the years, the firm has invested in over 150 businesses, participated in 19 IPO's, and completed over 100 exits.  Peter and I chat about how the growth equity space has evolved over time, what they look for in investment opportunities and how JMI helps the companies it invests in. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode, we chat with Eric Partaker, a McKinsey consultant, executive and entrepreneur turned peak performance expert. After a life altering experience, Eric decided to refocus his priorities on the things that matter most and figured out a way to consistently and effectively execute on those priorities. In our conversation, we cover his insights into the power of identity, productivity strategies and anti-fragility. These ideas can enable individuals to excel beyond measure while still being in control and balance. We hope you enjoy the show.  To learn more about Eric, visit www.ericpartaker.com.

In this episode we chat with Kyle Griswold, a Partner of FTV Capital and a Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investor of 2020. FTV Capital is a growth equity investment firm that has raised nearly $4 billion since inception and has invested in 120 high-growth companies across enterprise technology and services, financial services, and payments and transaction processing. Kyle and I chat about some of the investment areas he is most excited about, how FTV Capital drives value for the companies it backs, and how FTV has built a strong firm culture over the years. We hope you enjoy the show.

Welcome to the GrowthCap podcast where we chat with CEOs, investors, and other key industry leaders to uncover insights and strategies for accelerating growth and succeeding in business. I am your host RJ Lumba. In this episode we chat with Jan Arendtsz, a former corporate software professional turned entrepreneur. Unlike many of today’s startup founders, Jan took a more methodical approach to founding and ultimately building his company, Celigo. Celigo simplifies the integration of business applications and data sources in the enterprise. Its integration Platform-as-a-Service or iPaaS solution allows both technical and business users to connect applications together quickly through an industry-leading guided user interface. Based in San Mateo, California, Celigo is backed by growth equity. In setting out as a software entrepreneur, Jan first identified a distinct need in the market through his client engagements as an IT services provider. He then began gradually transitioning to developing a software pro